THE GRAND ORGAN OF LIVERPOOL METROPOLITAN
CATHEDRAL

THE GRAND ORGAN OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL

David Dunnett, Grand Organ, Norwich Cathedral

Priory PRDVD 11

(Blu-ray)

[71:50]

Organ labels have been curiously
reticent about releasing recitals on
Blu-ray, the hi-audio, high definition-picture format now securely
established as the first choice for
opera releases on video. Pro
Organo announced a Blu-ray
audio release featuring an Anglo-American recital
by Bruce Neswick
on the Aeolian-Skinner/Quimby organ of New York’s
Cathedral of
St John the Divine, but it has yet to be
released. Although Naxos
issues Blu-ray audio discs, other labels are
conspicuous by their
refusal to commit to the video format. Which
makes Priory Records’
decision to begin releasing Blu-ray DVDs both
pioneering and
praiseworthy.

Three Blu-ray DVD titles have been announced,
with the first
two – recitals from Norwich Cathedral and
Liverpool’s Metropolitan
Cathedral by David Dunnett and Richard Lea
respectively – now
available. While both include a conventional DVD
disc and an
audio CD, it’s the Blu-ray component that sets
these issues apart
in programmes that are as much a feast for the
eye as for the ear.
Apparent on both from the very first frames is
the fabulously
enhanced quality of images that boast a clarity
and immediacy that
DVD simply can’t compete with. Indeed, the
high-resolution images
call to mind Mercury’s claim for their
agenda-setting 1950s Living
Presence LP series: ‘You are there!’

Both discs feature performances in stereo and
richer, more
detailed and wholly involving 5.1 Surround. Add
in the crystal-clear,
diamond-sharp images and the result is an
audio-visual treat.
Informative additional features include an ‘organ
tour’ – Lea’s
a revealing 40-minute illustration of the
impressive dexterity of
Liverpool’s 1967 J.W. Walker & Sons
instrument, Dunnett’s a
25-minute history lesson in the traumatic history
of Norwich’s
many organs over the past 350 years – and both
soloists narrating a
featured work in a split-screen format that
allows you to simultaneously see the hands-and-feet coordination of the
performances.
Musically, both recitals are despatched with
impeccable eloquence.
Lea’s wide-ranging programme is suitably laced
with Liverpudlian
associations – works by Paul McCartney, Beatles
producer George Martin and Stephen Adam’s A Holy City sitting comfortably alongside music by Purcell, Ronald Mason, Jon Kristian Fjellestad and
Liszt’s mighty Fantasia & Fugue on ‘Ad Nos ad Salutarem Undam’. If
Dunnett’s choices are more conventional – Iain Farrington’s fizzy,
virtuosic 1977 miniature Live Wire the exception to a programme
largely dominated by Bach and seminal English names from the 19th
and last centuries – it’s not any the less enjoyable for that.

So, vivid first forays into previously unchartered territory, the
results of which glowingly vindicate what is to be hoped is more
than a one-off experiment.